July 11th, 2000:
Much has happened since the
last update. I'm very sorry that I have not been updating this page recently, but either
my army service, problems in real life and other projects has kept me from updating the
site. As well as good old plain laziness of course.
I was demobilized from the army
exactly 11 days ago, on June 30th, 2000 and now I've finally been able to get the grasp to
the real life as well. I've managed to arrange most of my personal affairs, and I'm
currently driving my drivers license as well as searching for a job of some kind. I'm
taking a year off from school and start to get used to civil life again.
In the internet, almost as much
has happened as well. Recently, version 1.08 of Diablo was released, making my mod
incompatible with Battle.Net. Diablo 2 was released and shipped and completely new
horizons opened to Diablo fans. Me included. As you have might noticed, the site has been
moved under hosting of PlanetDiablo
- not just because it's a brave new Diablo fansite, but because I'm actually in it's
staff. As a content developer and editorial writer, I've been responsible most with the
sites Diablo I content, but I'm moving more to Diablo 2 stuff now. If you guys have been
in contact with me trough ICQ, this is the "one huge D2 project" I've been
speaking about, and it has taken most of my free time in the past 6-8 weeks.
As with PlanetDiablo, I'm also
moving more to Diablo 2 in the Diablo-scene as well. This means that I'll have less and
less time to use for Abysmal Diablo now on - not that I've been working with it much
lately anyway. Most of it's players have moved to Diablo 2 anyway, so I'm taking a leap
forward as well. So, as sorry I'm to inform you all, Abysmal Hellfire will never be
released. Although much has done with it already, too much still remains undone and I
don't want to disappoint you guys with a incomplete mod. So, I've decided to leave the
project as it is and not release it, although not with a eased mind. I've put a lot of
work for it already and now I feel like I've wasted my time, but the situation is what it
is. I just don't have the time and the interest to finish the mod anymore, I'm very sorry.
As with Abysmal Diablo itself
then, I've inconsistent feelings about it. It pisses me so off that Blizzard released the
almost unnecessary version 1.08 patch, doing a kill strike to the whole mod community. As
all the offset locations of the diablo.exe has been changed, I would need to re-do almost
the whole mod to make Abysmal Diablo 1.08 compatible. Although I could copy&paste most
of the data, I still would need to calculate the name pointers and file locations again,
which takes a whole lot of time and can not be done automatically with a mod-maker for
instance. But the data is not such a huge problem as the mods code-changes are. Those I
need to do completely from scratch again and I've quite weak skills with disassembling and
doing them in the first place was quite difficult to me.
I'm still uncertain will I do a
version 1.08 of Abysmal. It would need a serious effort from me, and I'm already quite
busy with PlanetDiablo and Diablo 2 itself. I could transfer most of the data-changes
pretty easily, but most of the code changes wouldn't be that easy. And Abysmal Diablo
wouldn't be the same mod without them. If I'm not certain will I do the patch within a
week, I'll not do it. As I've said, most of the players of it has moved to Diablo 2
already and although how much I would like to make a 1.08 compatible mod to all you true
fans, I have to put my life in order. If I'm never going to make the update, I might see
you guys again with Abysmal Diablo 2 in my hands. With all the trainers for Diablo 2
popping out, seems that the "cheat-protection" which Blizzard did for Diablo 2
counts only to Closed Battle.Net. But if it's going to happen, it's still far away in the
future. Diablo 2 is interesting enough for at least few years to the future, so we won't
be needing any mods for now. :)
See ya all at PlanetDiablo!
